After arriving in a ferryboat festooned in bunting, with big-band jazz blaring from the shoreline, Mayor Bill de Blasio made an announcement on Monday that New York City’s new ferry service would soon begin. Then he walked away.

No questions were asked; no questions were allowed.

Most other times, this would be a strange sight — the mayor of the nation’s largest city passing up a chance to pontificate and parry with the City Hall press corps. But over the past four weeks, Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, has staunchly exhibited an approach that might be described as “don’t ask, don’t answer.”

No questions were allowed after a Police Academy graduation, beside the statue known as “Fearless Girl” in Lower Manhattan, or even at the handful of events during the mayor’s weeklong road trip on Staten Island last week.

[. . .]

“It’s very unusual for a mayor of New York City,” said Robert Shrum, a former Democratic political consultant, presidential campaign adviser and speechwriter who teaches politics at the University of Southern California.

“Unless you’re Donald Trump, appealing to a very different electorate, it’s just a loser,” he added. Voters may not care about whether this or that question is answered as much as the news media does, but “after a while, people get upset, too,” Mr. Shrum said. “Over time it can make you look petulant, withdrawn.”

As for reporters being stifled at staged events: “You don’t want to be a part of it, you don’t have to come.”

That is a bad, bad thing to say. Especially now. This is the age of President Trump, defamer of the news media, suppressor of facts, denier of reality. When shutting down reporters for doing their jobs, Mr. de Blasio — who so fiercely poses as an anti-Trump — displays his inner Donald.

Mayor Bill de Blasio walked out on his own news conference on Thursday without answering any questions, irked that reporters were not asking what he wanted them to ask.

In an extraordinary test of wills with the City Hall press corps, Mr. de Blasio refused to respond to questions that might ordinarily be considered well within the bounds of what the mayor of New York City would be expected to address. He was asked about the murder of a black man who police said was stabbed to death in Manhattan by a white man who had come to the city to harm black people, and the arrest in Israel of a man accused of making a string of telephone threats against Jewish community centers and other sites in the United States.

The mayor had called reporters to a chilly block of East 56th Street to make a pitch about his proposal for a so-called mansion tax on the sale of apartments or houses of more than $2 million, to pay for rent relief for older New Yorkers. The plan would need approval by the state legislature and is seen as having little hope of success in a State Senate that has generally responded with hostility to both new taxes and the mayor’s initiatives.

Against the backdrop of a luxury high-rise (with a handwritten sign in one window reading, “De Blasio doesn’t care about the working middle class”), the mayor spoke about the tax over the din of construction, passing trucks and a heckler who shouted, “Everyone hates you, de Blasio!”

After City Hall had engaged in cordial talks with Airbnb for two months in 2015, a politically powerful opponent of the home-sharing website gave $200,000 to Mayor de Blasio’s now-defunct non-profit group, Campaign for One New York.

The cordiality quickly stopped.

Shortly after the donation, top aides to Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen broke off communications with Airbnb. And the shift came as the mayor began ratcheting up enforcement against so-called illegal hotels that use Airbnb to attract customers.

The sequence of events came to light in the Daily News ongoing investigation of de Blasio’s fundraising, and represents the closest timing to date between a big-dollar donation to CONY and mayoral action.

[. . .]

The donor, UniteHere, a national union affiliated with the union that squared off against Airbnb, the Hotel & Motel Trades Council, insisted the donation had nothing to do with opposition to the home-sharing company.

The hacked emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta call Mayor Bill de Blasio a “terrorist” for declining to endorse his former boss and refer to him as a “bit insufferable.”

[. . .]

When Clinton’s campaign was having issues with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Podesta wrote in June 2015 to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin that Garcetti should be added “to the BdB file.”

“Adding to the list! What is the deal with mayors these days,” Abedin replied.

Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, advised Podesta to ignore de Blasio’s Progressive Agenda Committee.

“Politically, we are not getting any pressure to join this from our end. I leave it to you guys to judge what that means for you. But I’m not sweating it,” Tanden said.

After de Blasio reported to Tanden, Podesta and Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook that he had praised Clinton during an appearance on “Morning Joe” and would “spend the next year and a half battling conservatives at every turn,” Tanden said she found the mayor to be annoying.

“I find him a bit insufferable. Sorry if I let my extreme annoyance show,” Tanden wrote to Podesta.

De Blasio joked Wednesday that he was “crushed” to hear about the emails.

“When you are nudging your friends to go farther sometimes people push back or find that unpleasant,” de Blasio said.

The mayor said he goes “back a long way” with Clinton and her inner circle.